The Catholic Campaign for Human Development has been helping the poor find a way out of poverty since 1970.

Catholic Charities USA reports that each year, more than 9.5 million people in need turn to some 1,400 local Catholic Charities organizations for help. That help ranges from a bag of groceries offered at a food pantry to family counseling or child care. The services vary depending on community needs. For many states, the $27 billion reduction in the Food Stamp Program, passed as part of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, has left more people in need of emergency services. For example, according to a recent report of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, between 2000 and 2001, aid for emergency food grew 23%, and requests for emergency shelter increased by 13%. And in a study of Second Harvest, nearly 60 percent of local hunger relief agencies reported an increase in the number of people requesting food aid since 1997. Although provision of emergency services represents one type of response to poor people with urgent and immediate needs, it is only part of the story. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development promotes a more structural and long-term solution. The Campaign helps poor people help themselves by changing the social conditions that cause poverty (such as, racism, lack of access to health care and quality education, and failure to pay living wages) and by developing self-sufficiency. Explore how CCHD and other organizations, religious and secular, are picking up the slack where public funding falls short. How does your state fare? What are the needs in your community and who is filling them today?

• Contact local shelters, soup kitchens and other providers of emergency services to find out how changes in assistance programs are impacting them. Talk to local churches and other charities about increased demand and what they're doing to fill the growing need. Ask your state's division of Welfare or Medicaid, or the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) offices about caseloads and the obstacles faced by those still receiving assistance.
• Contact a community-based, self-help organization, like those supported by CCHD, to learn about its agenda for action to solve the problems of poverty and injustice in the local community.

Project Highlight: MANNA has been fighting hunger in Nashville, Tenn., for 25 years by addressing the root causes of hunger. It has won a state-mandated school breakfast program, brought the federally funded Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food assistance program to Nashville, helped thousands of poor families receive public benefits through its outreach programs and won fundamental improvements in the state's food stamp and welfare programs.

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